PREACHING
Some ministers would make good martyrs: they are so dry they would burn well.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
The vicar stepped into the pulpit and opened up the Bible in front of him with a flourish.
“What does that mean, Daddy?” said the little boy in the front row.
“It means that he’s going to tell us important things about the Bible.”
Then the vicar took out a sheaf of notes and laid them carefully on the lectern.
“What does that mean, Daddy?”
“That means he is going to explain all the things in the Bible story.”
Then the vicar took off his watch and put it on the side of the pulpit.
“What does that mean, Daddy?”
“That means absolutely nothing at all.”
—Murray Watts
A preacher in Cornwall puzzled his congregation by choosing the following text for his harvest message: “One of them that stood by drew his sword, and smote the servant of the high priest, and struck off his ear” (Mark 14:47). When asked afterwards why he had not picked a more suitable text, he replied, “No, this is a good one. Don’t you see? First the blade and then the ear.”
A vicar was on holiday when his house was flooded. All his sermons were kept in the basement, and the first question he asked his son, who had gone in to investigate the damage, was, “Are my sermons wet?”
“No, Dad,” the son replied. “They are as dry as ever.”
—Rolling in the Aisles
The preacher who can’t broaden or deepen his sermons usually lengthens them.
When a man preaches to men, I want him to make it a personal matter, a personal matter, a personal matter.
—Daniel Webster
A gray-haired old woman, long a member of her community and church, shook hands with the minister after the service on Sunday morning. “That was a wonderful sermon,” she told him. “Everything you said applies to someone I know.”
A pastor asked George Burns, of all people, how to interest people in his sermons. He answered, “Have a good beginning and a good ending, and have them close together.”
Preach not because you have to say something but because you have something to say.
—Archbishop Whatley
A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat.
—Henry Longfellow
No man preaches his sermon well to others if he does not first preach it to his own heart.
—John Owen
To make a speech immortal you don’t have to make it everlasting.
Some preachers think their duty is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted.
A church member said of her minister, “Six days of the week he is invisible and on the seventh he is incomprehensible.”
A minister said to his wife, “Do you think I put enough fire into my sermons?” She said, “To tell the truth, I don’t think you put enough of your sermons into the fire.”
To love to preach is one thing; to love to whom you preach is quite another.
—D. Martin Lloyd-Jones
How good we are as preachers depends—not altogether, but (make no mistake!) primarily—on how good we are as men.
—John Knox
Three common lies:
1. The check is in the mail.
2. I’m from the government; I’m here to help.
3. I’ll be brief.
If you preach to hurting hearts, you will never want for a congregation; there is one in every pew.
—Joseph Parker
After all our preparation, general and specific, for the conduct of public worship and for preaching, our dependence for real success is on the Spirit of God.
—John A. Broadus
A young man asked Charles H. Spurgeon, “Why don’t I get results from my preaching?”
Spurgeon answered, “You must preach for a verdict.”
A bishop gave a masterful oration that drew the ecstatic applause of the people when he finished. He then noticed that Francis de Sales was in the congregation, and he asked the spiritual leader what he thought of the sermon. After a long silence, St. Francis replied, “You pleased all but one.”
—Donald Coggan
The new preacher’s car broke down just after the morning service. On Monday morning he drove it to the town’s one garage for repairs.
“I hope you’ll go a little easy on the cost,” he told the mechanic. “After all, I’m just a poor preacher.”
“I know it,” came the reply. “I heard you preach yesterday.”
When Joseph Parker, the brilliant biblical preacher of City Temple, London, preached at a farewell service for G. Campbell Morgan, he affirmed out of his years of devotion to the Scriptures: “You may depend on one thing—the only ministry that will last, and be as fresh at the end as it was at the beginning, is a biblical and an expository one. Mere anecdotes, whether possible or impossible—most of them are impossible—fail, and in the long run exhaust themselves, but the Word of the Lord abideth forever.”
An elder said to his pastor, “Every Monday morning I see you coming from the YMCA. What do you do there?”
“Our ministerium meets there.”
“What do you do there?”
“We exchange sermons from each other so that we don’t have to prepare sermons.”
“How is it that you get rooked every time?”
Someone asked Spurgeon, “What should you do when your people get sleepy?” He answered, “Put pins in the preacher!”
Henry David Thoreau was reportedly unimpressed by telegraph wires which had been strung across the New England sky to speed news from New York to Boston. After a friend had glowingly described the rapidity and clarity with which a message could be sent, Thoreau raised a simple but crucial question, “What if we have nothing to say?”
The man of God must have something to say!
If God calls you to be a minister, don’t stoop to become a king.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
Carved on a pulpit: “If you haven’t struck oil in twenty minutes, quit boring.”
“Why do actors seem to have no difficulty in making an impression on their audiences?” was the question asked by the then Archbishop of Canterbury to Thomas Betterton (1635–1710). The famous actor replied, “Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.”
A reporter once said to George Bernard Shaw, “You have a marvelous gift for oratory. How did you develop it?”
Shaw replied, “I learned to speak as men learn to skate or cycle, by doggedly making a fool of myself until I got used to it.”
The Devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.
—Vance Havner
I often dream that I’m called on to preach, but I can’t find my outline.
—Martin Luther
After the Bishop of Lichfield spoke of the necessity of studying the Word, a vicar told the bishop that he could not believe his doctrine. “Often when I am in the vestry I do not know what I am going to talk about; but I go into the pulpit and preach and think nothing of it.” The bishop replied, “And you are quite right in thinking nothing of it, for your church wardens have told me that they share your opinion.”
—Charles H. Spurgeon
A preacher stood up and said, “I have so much to say, I don’t know where to begin.” A little boy stood up and said, “Could you begin somewhere near the end?”
I value a sermon not by the approbation of men, or of the ability manifest in it, but by the effect produced in comforting the saint and awakening the sinner.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
When you shoot over their heads, all you prove is that you are a poor aim.
One evening a Christian was walking home from a church service when he stopped to talk to a fellow member who had missed the meeting. The absentee asked him, “Is the sermon done?” “No,” came the reply, “the sermon is preached but it remains to be done.”
Illustrations in a sermon are like windows, but a sermon should not be all windows. A good story helps, but I have heard sermons that were built several stories too high!
—The Vance Havner Quote Book
Several years ago The British Weekly published this provocative letter.
Dear Sir:
It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for thirty years and I have probably heard three thousand of them. To my consternation, I discovered that I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitable spent on something else?
For weeks a storm of editorial responses ensued, which finally ended with this letter.
Dear Sir:
I have been married thirty years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly my wife’s cooking. I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet … I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.
—John Schletewitz
Luther’s advice to a young preacher:
Stand up cheerfully.
Speak out manfully.
Leave off speedily.
—D. L. Moody
After an outstanding man attended the men’s Bible class, he was asked for a comment on the lesson. He replied that it was like the peace and mercy of God.
“Yes,” he continued, “it was like the peace of God because it passed all understanding, and like His mercy because I thought it would endure forever.”
It is not skillfully composed discourse, nor the mode of delivery, nor well-practiced eloquence that produces conviction, but the communication of divine power.
—Origen
The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying not “What a lovely sermon!” but “I will do something.”
—Francis de Sales
A lady called a Presbyterian minister and said, “My mother is very sick. Please come over quick.”
“But lady, you’re a Baptist. Why don’t you call your preacher?”
“Well, my mother has a contagious disease and I don’t want our preacher to get it.”
Ted Fix, a Dallas Theological Seminary graduate and evangelist, was holding meetings in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A shabby man came up afterwards and said, “I don’t believe a word you said—but I believe you believe it.”
W. H. Griffith Thomas’s advice to young preachers was: “Think yourself empty, read yourself full, write yourself clear, pray yourself keen—then enter the pulpit and let yourself go!”
John Wesley was so desirous of using the language of his people that he frequently read his sermons to the serving maid to see if she understood what he was saying.
God gives us the message, but He does so through a messenger who has been impacted by the truth.
—Phillips Brooks
A minister was called to a church of seven hundred and on his first Sunday someone asked him how he hoped to please seven hundred people. He wisely replied, “I don’t. I have come to please only One.”
“Why is it you have so many conversions and I never seem to have any?” a young preacher asked Spurgeon. “You do not expect to have conversations every time you preach, do you?” Spurgeon asked. “No, certainly I don’t expect anything like that,” he replied. “Then that is just the reason you don’t have them. I aim for conversions and expect to have them every time I preach.”
John Bunyan told of an incident which took place at the close of one of his sermons. A man said, “Mr. Bunyan, what a beautiful sermon you gave us this morning.” “You are too late,” said Bunyan, “the Devil told me that before I came out of the pulpit.”
A child said, “My dad’s a doctor. I can be sick for nothing.” Another said, “My dad is a lawyer. I can be bad for nothing.” A third lad responded, “My dad is a preacher. I can be good for nothing.”
“How did you like Mr. Spurgeon?” someone asked of a friend who had just returned from hearing the famous preacher.
The reply was, “I forgot to investigate Mr. Spurgeon; my attention was drawn so closely to the Savior of whom he was preaching.”
The true way to get rid of the boniness of a sermon is not by leaving out the skeleton, but by clothing it with flesh.
—Phillips Brooks
Charles H. Spurgeon once told of a man who preached so well and lived so badly that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they declared that he ought never to enter it again.
“You,” said Demosthenes to his great rival orator, Aeschilus, “make them say, ‘How well he speaks!’ I make them say, ‘Let us march against Philip.’ ”
The average man’s idea of a good sermon is one that goes over his head—and hits one of his neighbors.
The story is told of a preacher who was often referring to the unction of the Lord. Someone chided him about this and said, “Just what do you mean by unction?”
“Well,” he replied, “I don’t know if I can tell you exactly what it is but I can sure tell you what it ain’t.”
The Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte met a person one Sunday who said to him, “Dr. Whyte, you preached today as if you had come straight from the presence of God.” Whyte replied, “Perhaps I did.”
—Our Daily Bread
A curate went to his vicar and showed him his very early attempt at preaching. He had it all written out, as a lot of Anglicans do, and he handed it to his vicar and said, “Will it do?” Somewhat unkindly, the vicar replied, “Will it do what?”
I preach as though Christ were crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is coming back to earth again tomorrow!
—Martin Luther
Each time you go into the pulpit, go as if it were your first time, and your best time, and your last time.
—Vance Havner
“Would you do anything different if you had to live your life over again?” a reporter asked Billy Graham. The reply: “Yes, I would have studied more and spoken less. At least three times more than I had done.”
Donald Grey Barnhouse said, “If I had only three years to serve the Lord, I would spend two of them studying and preparing.”
A preacher’s throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the Word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Savior, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibility!
—Matthew Simpson
When a young man was preaching, an older pastor was there. After the sermon, the young preacher asked the older man what he thought. The man said it was pretty good except for three things.
“You read your sermon.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t do that.”
“You didn’t read it very well.”
“I’ll need to work on it.”
“It wasn’t worth reading.”
C. S. Lewis told Frank Gaebelein of a preacher who said that people “would be in danger of severe eschatological consequences.” C. S. Lewis asked the preacher after the service, “Do you mean they will be in danger of hell?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
One highly successful pastor reports that as a young preacher he preached in the usual abstract, flowery, oratorical style, over the heads not only of the children but also of the grownups, as younger preachers are tempted to do. One day a faithful elder said to him, “You preach well, Pastor, but you will never move this congregation until your sermons go with them into their homes.” The pastor changed his ways. Each sermon now pointed out to his hearers how to apply the truth of the text in their daily life at home. He learned to invent stories to do that. That, he reported, changed his congregation. It is well known that Richard Baxter changed his parish by going from home to home, showing his people how to have effective daily devotions.
A young minister fresh from college said to W. L. Watkinson, that master of satire, “You know, Dr. Watkinson, preaching does not take anything out of me.” “No,” said Watkinson, “and therefore it puts nothing into anyone else!”
When a country minister asked Henry Ward Beecher what to do when an audience went to sleep on a hot Sunday afternoon, Beecher replied, “Have an usher get a sharp stick and prod the preacher!”
Genius is not essential to good preaching, but a live man is.
—Austin Phelps
I preached as never sure to preach again
The message of a dying man to dying men.
—Richard Baxter
Preach any Christ but a crucified Christ and you will not draw people for long.
—R. A. Torrey
In many churches a mild-mannered man is preaching to mild-mannered people telling them to be mild.
You’re not called to preach if you’re not called to study.
After all our preparation, general and special, for the conduct of public worship and for preaching, our dependence for real success is on the Spirit of God.
—John A. Broadus
Sermons come out of a man’s life. Good preaching depends more on what a man is in himself than on academic preparation, accumulated reading, or the experience of years.
—Edward L. R. Elson
Martin Luther said preaching made his knees knock.
I preached in a little church not long ago, and while I was waiting to preach, I looked over and saw a fire extinguisher on the side of the pulpit. Strangest thing I’d ever seen! But the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed because if a fire is going to start anywhere it’s likely to start in the pulpit. If it doesn’t start there, you can forget about the rest of it.
—William Hinson
The message for tomorrow evening is rich. You will give it as something that has helped you, won’t you? Otherwise it is just an interesting little Bible study. The great thing is to give what has strengthened you and kindled your own soul. Then it is sure to kindle others.
—Amy Carmichael
A young preacher having trouble in his congregation came to me about it. I told him about my experience when I was a boy. When I would go to the barn at night to feed the horse or the cow, I would light a lantern and carry it with me. When I would open the barn door and step in, two things would happen: The rats would scurry and run for cover, and the birds which were roosting on the rafters would begin to sing. Light had those two very different effects. And when the Word of God is preached, you will see the rats run for cover and the birds begin to sing.
—J. Vernon McGee
A prominent preacher was delayed in getting to a meeting. Seeing this, Satan got there first and told the people he was the substitute. He opened the pulpit Bible, read a text, and proceeded to preach. The scheduled preacher finally arrived, recognized Satan in the pulpit, and was amazed to hear him declaring evangelical truth. After the meeting he said to the Devil, “Weren’t you afraid to preach the truth of God’s Word, lest it weaken your own kingdom?” Satan smiled and replied, “My preaching won’t change anybody’s life. You see, I can speak the right words, but I don’t have any unction.”
—Warren W. Wiersbe
An old American Indian attended a church service one Sunday morning. The preacher’s message lacked real spiritual food, so he did a lot of shouting and pulpit pounding to cover up his lack of preparation. In fact, as is sometimes said, he “preached up quite a storm.” After the service someone asked the Indian, who was a Christian, what he thought of the minister’s message. Thinking for a moment, he summed up his opinion in six words: “High wind. Big thunder. No rain.”
A pastor who was remarkable in the first period of his ministry for a boisterous mode of preaching, suddenly changed his whole manner in the pulpit and adopted a mild and dispassionate mode of delivery. When asked about the change, he replied, “When I was young I thought it was thunder that killed people; but when I grew older and wiser I discovered that it was the lightning. So I determined to thunder less and lighten more.”
I want to begin preachin’ you today about the parable of the Good Samaritan who commenced to go down from Jerusalem to Jericho, but he fell among thieves and they left him for dead. And lo and behold the Queen of Sheba came by in her chariot, in her high class silver-spoked wheels, but before she could help him, here came Elijah in his chariot and he challenged her to a drag race. And off they went in a cloud of exhaust fumes, and great, I say great, was the smell thereof. The Good Samaritan was worried ’cause the Queen of Sheba was not a good driver, so he got down on the floor of the chariot and after a few yards he wanted to see where he was, so he lifted up his head, and just as he did they passed under a juniper tree and his hair caught in the limbs, and there he was dangling between heaven and earth, forty days and forty nights. And the ravens brought him food, locusts, and wild honey. Then his wife Delilah came along and cut his hair. And some of it fell on stony ground, and some of it fell on good ground, and some of it fell among thorns. Then the Good Samaritan picked himself up and started walkin’ down the road and he came to a fork in the road and he didn’t know which way to go so he took the broad smooth path that headed down. And he ran into a little boy trying to kill a giant with a slingshot and he knew he didn’t want none of that.
So he got down on his knees before the burning bush and he said, “Lord, if there is one thing you can give me, give me wisdom to know which decision I should make.” He told him to go back to the fork in the road and go the other way. So he went back and took the straight path that led to the narrow gate. And he came into a cloud that was just about the size of a mustard seed. And out of that cloud, I say out of that cloud, it rained forty days and forty nights. And the whole earth was flooded, so he built himself an ark. Then he heard a voice saying, “Adam, Adam, where are you?” And he said, “Here I am, send me.” Then the animals on the ark cast lots to see who should be thrown overboard. And the Good Samaritan won the toss. And he chose to be thrown overboard. And when he was thrown into the water, a great big fish ate him and after three days and three nights, he spit him up on the shore, and great, I say great, was the mess thereof.
Then the Samaritan began to walk down the road and he got hungry. An’ he saw a man tearing down barns and buildin’ bigger barns. And he tried to buy some food from him, five loaves and two fishes with thirty pieces of silver. But the rich young ruler told him, “Go hang yourself.” And he came upon a crowd of people of about five thousand, just countin’ the men. And he climbed up into a sycamore tree to see what he could see, and someone yelled up at him, “Come down and eat with me.” And he said, “I can’t. I just took a wife.” And while he was up in that sycamore tree he looked out into the far distance and he saw the leaning tower of Babel, and on top of that tower there was Jezebel with her coat of many colors. And he cried out, “Throw her down!” And they threw her down. And he cried out again, “Throw her down!” Seventy times seven they threw her down. And the fragments they collected were twelve baskets full. Now the question I want to ask you, dearly beloved brethren, is “Whose wife will she be in the judgment?”
A young minister in a college town was embarrassed by the thought of criticism in his cultured congregation. Seeking counsel from his father, an old and wise minister, he said, “Dad, I’m hampered in my ministry here. If I cite something from geology, there is a professor of science right there before me. If I use an illustration from Roman mythology, another professor is ready to trip me up for my little inaccuracy. If I mention something in English literature that pleases me, I’m cowed by the presence of the learned man who teaches that subject. What shall I do?”
The sagacious old man replied, “Don’t be discouraged, son. Preach the Gospel. They probably know little of that.”
PREDESTINATION
A group of theologians were discussing predestination and free will. When the argument became heated, the dissidents split into two groups. One man, unable to make up his mind which group to join, slipped into the predestination crowd. Challenged as to why he was there, he said, “I came of my own free will.” The group retorted, “Free will. You can’t join us!” He retreated to the opposing group and met the same challenge. “I was sent here,” he answered honestly. “Get out!” they stormed. “You can’t join us unless you come of your own free will.” And the confused Christian was out in the cold.
—Leslie B. Flynn
PREDICAMENTS
A woman rushed to the camera counter and gasped, “My husband slipped off the ladder and is hanging from the eaves with his hands. Please hurry!” “What can I do?” asked the clerk. “Sell me a roll of film as quickly as you can” was the answer. “My camera is empty!”
PREJUDICE
Prejudice is self-inflicted blindness.
Prejudice is being down on what you’re not up on.
Prejudice is a great time saver. It enables one to form opinions without bothering to get the facts.